By Kristine Jane R. Liu
IMAGINE getting to do what you love best and being handsomely paid for it. For the general run of humanity, it is a path only a lucky few have been blessed to take.
But for this 27-year-old music video director, it is about what his favorite novel, The Alchemist, has always reminded him: When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
Meet UST Fine Arts Advertising graduate and former Varsitarian art director Alberto “Treb” Monteras II; he has directed dozens of music videos that have won him awards and accolades. He is widely considered one of the best in the field.
Stroke of luck
Graduating from the old College of Architecture and Fine Arts in 2001, Treb used to content himself with the monotonous lifestyle of working at the creative department of a clothing company.
“During that time, I got so bored with the repetitiveness that I wanted to resign,” Treb said. So to cope up with the drudgery, he took on odd jobs such as networking—selling food supplements at night, and knocking at strangers’ doors asking if they wanted a foot spa or a facial scrub during weekends to augment his income.
The break came in 2004 when his employer asked him to join him in a meeting with South Border, the famous band, to design their attire and album cover.
Incidentally, South Border was also looking for a music video director and asked Treb if he knew a film student or editor who could shoot the video for them.
Treb offered his editing services. Upon learning that he had studied at Mowelfund Film Institute, the band asked Treb if he would be willing to direct the video for their new record, The Show. Monteras jumped on the chance to direct a music video despite the fact he was a greenhorn.
“It was really funny because during that time, I had not seen a professional camera or studio lights used in a set,” Treb recalled. “I even forgot to yell ‘Cut!’ during the first take.”
Still, The Show earned Treb numerous awards.
In 2004 alone, the music video won the Best RNB Video in the First Philippine Hip Hop Awards, was nominated in the 18th Awit Awards as Video of the Year, and was nominated again as the Most Stylish Video during the MTV Style Awards.
“It was the most memorable video I directed since it was my first time to hold a professional camera or to use lighting,” Monteras said.
Monteras quickly shifted gear. He resigned to work full-time as a music video producer and director.
To date, Treb has produced and directed 39 music videos of records by Nina, Martin Nievera, and other musicians. He has embarked on stage directing, doing six concerts the most recent of which was the Music Museum concert of the hit band Hale.
Monteras has also directed two international music videos—American Idol finalist Jasmin Trias’s Kung Paano and American Juniors finalist Katelyn Tarver’s I’ll Make It Real.
Other than The Show, his award-winning works include Stay Real by April and I Do by Nina, which won the Best RNB Video MYX Awards in 2006 and 2007, respectively. His Tulog Na by Sugar Free was nominated for Best Production Design MTV Awards last year.
This year, Monteras’s Invincible by Christian Bautista and Someday by Nina were nominated in the Best Mellow Video MYX Award, with the former winning the award.
Monteras said he tries to avoid repeating himself in his videos.
“That’s why I make it a point that each project I make is different from my previous ones,” Monteras said.
So where does he get his inspiration? Laughing, he said that he gets ideas from his own life, dreams, and even nightmares. Sometimes he gets his motivation from other people’s experiences.
My parents are my biggest inspiration, Monteras added.
Musical alchemy
Coelho, Monteras’s favorite author, writes in The Alchemist that to realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.
And Treb said that without his parents, he would not have realized that his destiny lies in the camera. At the young age of four, he said that his parents had taught him everything about photography.
Treb’s father, Alberto Monteras, is an engineer who desired to become a wedding videographer. His mother’s hobby is also photography.
“Every time my friends and I would listen to music, I would come up with my own concept of how I want the song would look like if superimposed with graphics,” Monteras said. “That was when I realized that more than anything else, I want to direct music videos.”
Monteras said he had thought of directing television commercials so he took up Advertising in UST in 1997 where, he said, he learned all the basics such as composition, storyboarding, and conceptualization.
“In college, we were given a lot of projects where we were required to come with a concept on the spot,” Treb said.
Monteras added he also owes his training in photography to the Varsitarian. Although Treb was assigned as the Art director of the publication from 2000 to 2001, he said he loved to moonlight in the Photography section.
“My first assignment as the photographer was also the first time I used an SLR camera,” he said. “That was how I learned the strict and painstaking discipline of taking pictures.”
Treb’s main contribution to the Varsitarian was sustaining its monthly comic strip, Tomas U. Santos, the brainchild of the paper’s art section in the mid-1980s; and drawing his own version of Tom-Tom, the paper’s talking tiger mascot.
Aside from juggling his schedule between the Varsitarian and studies, Treb also acted as a guest artist in two Teatro Tomasino productions, Aning, Anino, and Pitik Bulag sa Buwan ng Pebrero.
“My skills in acting, dancing, and singing helped me a lot. I guess, it is my advantage over the others,” he said.
But his destiny it seems does not lie in the center stage of theater, but behind the camera, producing images that meld strikingly well with music and lyrics.
Music, after all, has a life and dynamic all its own. And for Treb Monteras, even when he’s in the heat of shooting glossy music videos, music still affords him quiet moments of solitude, and it is during these moments that he can listen to his own emotions talking.
